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Sunday, June 14, 2015

Day 25

Day 25: 6/11/15 (Portland)
27 miles

We had a better game plan for exploring Portland today since we got a small dose of the city the day before.  We also tried to better plan when and what we would/could eat.  The day started with a visit to Nong’s Khao Man Gai food truck which sells one dish, chicken and rice, yet the line was 20+ people long!  Because everyone was forced to order the same thing, the line moved pretty quickly.  With all its fame and glory, we purchased a bottle of Nong’s famous sauce along with our lunch.  We grabbed our food and drove to the International Rose Test Garden at the edge of the city.  The meal came with a little postcard with directions on how to eat the lunch, but we only half followed them.  We were too hungry to try and nibble on a cucumber between each bite.  Once we were finished lunch, we walked around the rose gardens to admire the variety of colors and scents.  Most of the plants had huge blooms, and they looked different than your typical red rose. 



  
While at the gardens, we realized we left the big camera and the spare battery to the point-and-shoot at the apartment so we headed back before continuing the rest of our day.  On the way through, we stopped at Lardo which is a sandwich shop specializing in pork.  Rico picked out a Korean pork shoulder sandwich and Jillian decided she would try the crispy pig ears.  Neither of us had tried pig ears before, but we thought, when in Portland.  We sat outside to enjoy our snacks, though the pig ears were not very enjoyable.  They were pretty fatty and the cartilage in the center was just unappetizing.  We were going to give the leftovers to a person on the streets, but we didn’t pass any between the restaurant and the car so we saved the sandwich and trashed the pig ears.  At least we can say we tried them. 


 After grabbing our things from the apartment we headed to the east side of the city.  We liked the eastern side because it was a little less busy and parking was a lot more free.  We parked down a side street and started walking to Bread and Ink, a little restaurant we were headed to for happy hour, when we were interrupted by a Blue Star Donut shop.  We had read that it was a top 10 store so of course we stopped in.  We asked the counter person what was good and we went with the blueberry bourbon basil glazed doughnut and a classic buttermilk with raspberry frosting.  Lucky us, he also through in a chocolate crunch doughnut! The buttermilk was to die for – there is no other doughnut like it. If we wouldn’t gain 100 pounds, we’d eat one every day – or at least Jillian would.  Once we cleaned all the frosting off our faces, we finally made it to Bread and Ink for a drink.


Our next stop was the Portland Cider House, a fairly new addition to Portland.  They had 28 ciders on tap: 6 of their own, 1 from the UK, and the rest were mostly from the northwest.  They offered tasting flights where you could pick 5 ciders so we each got our own.  Out of those 10, we really liked the passion fruit made by Portland Cider House and the serious scrump, an 11% cider!  With so many left to try, we decided to get another flight to share, and then afterwards we had an 8oz of our favorites (still the passion fruit and the scrump).  We decided to walk off our buzz by traveling a few blocks up to visit the Viking Soul Food food truck (since one of our ice cream flavors was inspired by their menu).  We ended up getting a pickled egg with black pepper mayo and caviar and then split a smoked salmon wrap.  Once we got back to the car, we drove to our last stop, the Potato Champion.  We ordered some poutine so we could compare it to the ice cream we had the night before from Salt & Straw.




We got home and just relaxed and tried digesting all our food.  We caught up on a few episodes of Game of Thrones instead of catching up on our blog, sorry not sorry.  Around midnight we decided to go out and see if we could get some hot dogs.  According to their site, they’re normally open until 3am, but when we arrived their truck was nowhere to be seen.  We tried digging for information about where they could be, but we came up empty handed.  After calling it quits, we passed out for the night.


Fact:
You can have a successful food truck only serving one dish, just ask Nong

Lesson:
Bat your eyelashes a few times at the doughnut man, and you can get a free doughnut


Eat Well; Travel Often
Rico & Jillian

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